Angela Kelly: Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 449. 

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not-so-typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host, certified life coach Angela Kelly. 

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to today’s episode. I have a very good friend and colleague of mine here on the podcast. Her name is, I call her Dr. Roseann, Roseann Capanna-Hodge. She is an expert in regulation, nervous regulation. We’re going to talk about it. She has just dropped a new book called The Dysregulated Kid, which I know all of you are interested in hearing about.

We’re here as leaders. We’re here as teachers, we’re here as students, and so I’m going to let Roseann tell you a little bit about herself, her background, and her new book because it is fantastic. It’s something we need to be talking about on the regular here in education for ourselves and for our students. So Roseann, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Well, thank you for that beautiful introduction. I’m grateful to have the privilege of knowing you, and this is my second time on. So…

Angela Kelly: It is. That’s right. 

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: I’m glad. And as a certified school psychologist, I know what it’s like to be boots on the ground in a school, and it is a different time, and we are constantly evolving, and people at every level in a school, right from the custodian to the superintendent have a lot on their shoulders, you know? And my book is called The Dysregulated Kid because for 30 years, I’ve been watching this dysregulation crisis happen. 

But for 30 years, I have been helping the most dysregulated kids and families regulate their nervous systems, which means they can pay attention better, they can process better, they’re happier, they have less mental health issues and symptoms. So I really wanted to take the science, as I always do, and make it so ridiculously easy that anybody could regulate themselves, from the teacher who’s got a classroom full of kids that are struggling to the mom and dad, to the grandma, to anybody. 

This is really a book about what are simple ways that every day I can do little things to bring my nervous system back into balance and really, why is it so important? You know, because we are moving to this place of constant clinical diagnosis and people having strife and being unhappy and struggling with focus and all these things that happen when the nervous system dysregulates. And yet we’re making regulation feel like it’s unattainable and so hard. And I’m here to tell you, absolutely not, that if the things that I did with the most dysregulated kids with serious clinical issues, if they worked when people did it, it can work for anybody.

Angela Kelly: Yes. I love this approach because I know that for the last 30 years you have been working in a clinical setting with students get referred for behavioral or academic concerns. They go through 504 and people are looking for them to get diagnosed for an IEP to qualify for an individualized education plan. 

And one of my philosophies in these meetings was, can we not just do the strategies that we’re waiting for the strategy until they get the diagnosis versus just like, let’s try the strategy first and see if we can just circumvent this whole process of getting them labeled. Let’s just do it now in the classrooms and see what happens versus having them go through this process of getting labeled and getting qualified and then giving them these strategies. It sounds like that’s what I hear you saying as well.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Well, that’s amazing. And where were you in all my school meetings? Actually, I did have some amazing school meetings. It’s just sometimes when you’re in these rooms and you’re in hearings and things like that, it didn’t always go well. But why wouldn’t we want to do more for everybody? 

You know, when I used to go into a school, whether it was a private school or a public school, I would be going in for one kid, and I would go to the teacher and say, let’s do this for the whole classroom. Like everybody will benefit and you will feel the benefit. And so then I would have teachers who would get so excited, administrators like, of course. And every time it made things better. And we shouldn’t wait. And guess what? We now, right, what is it? By 2031, one in 27 births of male and female will be an autistic child.

And it is, I believe it’s one in 27 males already. So we now have just about in every classroom in America, we’re moving to having an autistic student. That’s just one form of neurodivergence, right? That’s a nervous system that’s more sensitive to their environment, going to require these things. Why wouldn’t we do this for everybody? Because we often think nervous system dysregulation, which is really difficulty shifting your nervous system between stress and calm. We’re supposed to be able to moderate stress. Every day we have stressors. You and I were talking about some of the personal stressors we were catching up.

And even talking about it gets you a little, gets your nervous system a little activated. But that’s normal. In a healthy nervous system, it goes from calm, parasympathetic, then a stressor happens and it moves into a sympathetic dominant. But a normal system will say, perceive threat, danger is over, come back down. What’s happening is I talk about the nervous system as a stress cup, Angela, and what happens when a cup is, you put too much in a cup. 

So the nervous system is the same thing. It does not have unlimited capacity, and in our modern life, we just keep adding stressors, right? I’m going to short change sleep. I’m going to stretch myself and take two AP classes and the rest all honors classes. I’m going to, I don’t know, I had a fight with my boyfriend, my mom and I yelled, whatever. All these things sort of happen. And then we have all these people walking around going, you know, I can’t pay attention. I have anxious thoughts. I’m so snappy at everybody. 

And we then think, well, is it anxiety? Is it this? Maybe it is. I don’t know that. But our go-to should be like, we’ve got to regulate. And these are all strategies that are accessible regardless if you have a trauma background or a clinical diagnosis or your age. These are all free, accessible things because what was important to me having done clinic work, not everybody could get to me. Not everybody could afford me. And hello, I’m one person. I was one person. And you know, I no longer do clinical work. I’m just on this mission to really provide the antidote to this crisis. And hello, it’s really simple. It’s not so hard. We got to stop overthinking and start doing.

Angela Kelly: Mhm. Mhm. Say more about that because I think the listeners out here, they’re really curious. They probably heard about nervous system regulation, dysregulation. That language is becoming more mainstream as well as like vagus nerve. Like I’ve heard a lot of conversation in social media presence with the vagus nerve. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Sure. I mean, I mentioned our stress response system, which is our ANS, which is our autonomic nervous system, and its job is to mitigate and handle stress as you do things. So my son called me earlier and I don’t like to talk to him when he’s in the car, but all of a sudden I hear him go, holy cow. And I’m like, is everything all right? And he said somebody came into his lane. So he got, he got himself excited, and then I was like, okay, take a, I could hear him breathing. I was like, oh, I’m so glad you breathed through that.

And then I just said, that happened to me twice yesterday, Max. That’s why we can’t be on the phone. He’s like, I know. I said, I love you, goodbye, you know, and he brought himself down because he works, he has to work real hard, my Max. My Max is the dysregulated kid. He’s my opening story. There’s lots of other kids in there and success stories of people who did these things. 

But when we talk about that autonomic response, we talk and the vagus nerve. So our vagus nerve is what connects our gut to our brain. And so we have to start thinking about our body as a whole body system. And when we think about mental health, we really only think about the brain. We only think about neurotransmitters. And that’s because our diagnostic and statistical manual, what we use to diagnose people, unfortunately very much aligns with a pharmacological intervention. It doesn’t align with, let’s back it up. Let’s start looking at behavior as signs of the nervous system being under or overstimulated. That’s a huge reframe. 

So instead of saying, why is this kid doing this, you say, what is the nervous system showing that this kid needs, right? Or even this classroom. When I think about, I have this great story in my book, and I have a whole bonus chapter just for schools in this book because again, I’ve been there. But I remember going to this class, and it was the first time I had been in a school where there was a kindergarten. So I was there on the first day, Ang.

Angela Kelly: It’s the best. And you know I taught kindergarten for 15 years.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: You know exactly. So it was an inner-city school, so there were kids that had never set foot in a school. And there was, the school district had at the time 47 languages. So there was all kinds of things going on. And there was a teacher who was like grounding mother earth. And I walk in the classroom, there was like an aide guarding the door. There’s a kid that’s like trying to get out, you know, it was like full-on chaos, but not really because the teacher was like, I’m going to be the calm. And she just became the calm. 

And I remember being like, this is a masterclass in how much your regulation impacts everybody else. So when we’re talking about the nervous system and all of these things, vagus nerve, vagus stimulator, gut brain connection, these are all really important things. And our brain does connect to our gut, and stress impacts every single system in the body, your immune system, your hormone system, your gut, your neurotransmitters. 

So we’re often trying to go to these other things to do an intervention. And I’m not saying they’re not important. What I’m saying is if we don’t regulate first, nothing sticks. And so it’s part of this crisis that we’re seeing in that interventions are not working. How many times is a school psychologist that I say, you know, hey, listen, I really think you should go to therapy. Here’s why. And the parent would be like, we already did that. It didn’t work.

To finish that idea, right, we have these different systems and nothing is going to stick treatment wise. Like I said, somebody says, you know, I want to do therapy and they say it doesn’t work or I try this. It’s because the nervous system is too activated to accept that treatment. And the way biology works is your frontal lobes go offline as soon as you activate in a sympathetic dominant state. So what does that look like in a class? A bunch of ADD kids. 

And if you’ve ever watched a kid who experienced trauma or a kid who’s anxious or somebody who’s got OCD, they don’t look so different from kids with biological ADHD behaviorally. Their brains look very different because I did, you know, over 10,000 QEEG brain maps, which are basically brain scans. So we have to move beyond what we thought, and we have to start bringing these very practical things into the classroom, into homes because we think about these big interventions and parents are choking. They can’t do these things. So we need to make things much more simple. And that is what I did, not just in this book, but in all of my work.

Angela Kelly: That’s incredible. It’s interesting because in school, like I work with the school leadership side and they’re noticing the same thing in the adults in the room. Like, so the adults on campus, working with families, community members, in addition to children, and people feel like they are at a loss. They’re not sure what to do because you can only get so many kids through the IEP system, right? Where you’re qualifying them for special education. 

Only so many kids, one will qualify. Two, you can only pump through so many administrations and so many administering of these exams and these tests to determine qualification, which is why I said like, why, why not just start what we think is best practice for these students and go there and see if we can help from the onset. And then the kids who aren’t regulating at that point, we can, we can provide additional supports. 

So in the work that you’re doing now, and you’re seeing this, you know, you actually mentioned it as a crisis, which I believe educators would agree that this, we’re at a crisis level and teachers are feeling ill-equipped, school leaders are feeling ill-equipped. What are some, you said making it easy. They’re probably clapping right now as they’re listening to this. What are some things that you can recommend that they start doing that is very tangible, very hands-on, and something that’s very simple to start incorporating into the campus, the classroom, students and staff?

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Well, I think when it comes to schools, being that I definitely have worked in multiple schools, I feel that what happens is we have trends in school system, right? Whether it’s reading or math or social emotional learning, but what does really help and makes things a lot easier because schools, right, have a lot of pressure on them. They’re asked to do everything that isn’t being done at home. And let’s be honest, again, parents are struggling. We know this, right? And so educators are in a unique position because they have a lot more training around how kids, how they can shape kids’ behavior by what they do and say. 

And so we’re trying to transfer that knowledge to parents who, who may or may not be receptive to it. I feel like a lot of parents really are receptive to it. But one of the things that really works is shared language, right? So when schools start using things, the best way to amplify this is sharing the language. What systems could come into place? So I created shared language. So one of the things that I talk about is something called CALMS, C-A-L-M-S. It’s just a simple acronym. There’s nothing in there that costs any money. And the C is about co-regulating. 

So the first step in everything is to get the adult to regulate, as we talked about. So that’s the teacher, that’s the principal, that’s the parent. So the question becomes, how do we do that? You know, the other, the other parts, A is avoiding personalizing, L is looking for root causes, M is modeling the skills you want, and S is to support and reinforce because we as educators know, kids need a lot of reinforcement. I don’t think any parents do that, right? They don’t understand that. Who knew? You had to reinforce so much. You think you just say it one time. And we remember our own things, we think we only were told one time. It’s not true.

Angela Kelly: Right. Because our parents were like, don’t make me have to tell you twice.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Yeah, I know. How about, don’t make me tell you it again. So when we back up, the most important part is getting everybody to regulate. And so how can we do that? How can we have conversations? Like I try to think of every single thing, Angela, in this book, like there’s a book club guide here. There’s all kinds of ways for people to bring this in. I mean, certainly they can bring me in. But like we’re talking about global impact here. Like where can we get things going? 

But the language and demonstrating how to regulate within a classroom, just like when we have a kid with sensory issues, we start bringing sensory techniques in the classroom. Guess what? Everybody benefits. What can we do in the classroom? Can it be breath? Can it just be breath work that becomes part of the curriculum? We know breath work, hello, it’s free, and it’s the quickest way to pull your body into an autonomic nervous system. 

And I know some of the adults who are here listening might say, oh, I hate breath work or it doesn’t work. Well, I’m going to tell you that if you hate breath work, pretty much guarantee that you are somebody who’s dysregulated and your stress cup is full. And I want people to reframe dysregulation because we often think that what stresses our nervous system always has to be something bad. Your nervous system knows no difference between good and bad stress.

Angela Kelly: That’s interesting.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Yep. So we always are coming through our thinking brain. That’s not what happens in the autonomic nervous system. It decides what is perceived as stress, right? So certainly if something bad happens like, you know, you did get hit by a car or God forbid…

Angela Kelly: Like a trauma. Yeah.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Trauma, you know, then yes, it’s going to feel awful. But when it comes to filling up your stress cup, those things just fill up. So I got to the bus, but I had to run there. Okay, that’s a stressor. I had to study for a test. I got an A, that’s a stressor. I studied for a test and I got a D, that’s a stressor. It just keeps going, going. What I think we’re doing in our modern society, we are not doing the things to regulate ourselves. We certainly don’t have downtime, and I don’t want to blame technology, but technology is part of this problem. There’s no powering down, and the nervous system needs you to power down in order to regulate. There has to be moments of calm. 

And yes, would be great to take breaks from technology, but there also are other ways, right, including breath work and somatic and different exercises and all these different things. We need to pull the hum of this crisis down. And you know, what every school can do to bring parents in as part of this conversation through the PTA, through partnering with religious institutions, all the ways that they get out information. Schools are the hub of a community. They are the lifeblood, and I know there’s a lot on their plate, but if we keep putting interventions that don’t start with the nervous system, it’s like mopping the floor with a wet mop that we haven’t rung.

Like, it’s moving things around, but. And so when I would do this work, every year, Angela, in the summertime, I would get a lot of extra kids, you know, kids that were really struggling. And so every September, I would get the calls, and the parents would go, the school called and wanted to know what medication my kid. And I was like, did you tell them what we did? Did you tell them we regulated the nervous system? And they were like, yes. And, you know, I would have all these regulated kids, like bees, you know, going out. And then there would be teachers that would just call me and bring their own kids in, you know, and stuff because they just couldn’t believe what they were seeing. 

And so that’s the power of regulation, but it doesn’t happen in isolation. We can’t just regulate a child and expect a child to go back home. However, we can make their brain more available for learning and processing at the school day. I’m not a Pollyanna here. You have educators leading schools in every facet of America, inner city components, you know, places where there’s food deserts, you know, places where there has been trauma at the schools. 

And I’ve worked, you know, as a former provider, I was one of nine approved providers for Sandy Hook. I worked with 9/11 survivors. I understand trauma. What did I do every single time when I had a trauma victim, regardless of what the trauma was, regardless of the age, is I regulated their nervous system. I didn’t do anything else until they were regulated enough to do some kind of therapy because we know, again, the brain isn’t going to process that.

So that’s part of why we’re in such a stuck place because this is that missing ingredient in the sauce that makes the beautiful sauce. Like, you go to somebody’s house and you’re like, where did, what’s that sauce? What’s that? And you try to give somebody the recipe and they’re just not doing it right. This is the part that makes everything else work better.

Angela Kelly: That’s beautiful. And I want to reiterate what Rosanne just said, which was kids are not available for therapy, aka, they’re also not available for learning if they’re dysregulated. That’s true with adults, it’s true with students. So bringing in regulation techniques, one, it’s a win-win, win for teacher, win for students, and that helps learning. So that’s one thing I think we want to really drive home here. Children don’t have to be labeled or they don’t have to be even medically labeled or labeled academically as having some kind of a learning disability or a behavior disability, some kind of a disability in order to then provide these techniques. They are free and available to everyone. 

And when you learn them, all students can access them to the level at which they need them. You mentioned something about medication. Now, many, many IEPs have I sat in, and many times teachers would come in and say, we’ve tried everything, we need to bring up the topic of medication. These kids need to be medicated, right? Not every teacher, but some teachers. What would your response be to somebody who wants to push the medication before they’ve tried the regulation techniques that you’re suggesting in your book?

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Yeah, well, first of all, under federal law, we’re not allowed to suggest medication. We can only suggest, yes, so we can only suggest that they visit their physician or go to a psychiatrist. And even that is controversial because then a parent can come back to you and ask for the district to pay for that. FYI, that’s the law.

Angela Kelly: Yes. 

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Right? 

Angela Kelly: Definitely, as a school leader, I know this. Many teachers don’t know this, and maybe new school leaders, if you’re listening, make sure you’re seeking legal counsel before recommending any kind of outside services for a student.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Yeah. And from what I understand, it’s okay to say, you know, do you have a pediatrician and say, you know, here are the concerns or give them this rating scale, you can and go and talk to them about it. But pediatricians, oh my God, their plate is full. I mean, they’re dealing with everything and they don’t even have a basic course in nutrition, pediatricians. Like, I think that’s shocking to most people. They’re just starting to teach what food does to the body to doctors in modern training.

So what will a pediatrician do is their training is medication. They don’t necessarily know. What I found about physicians, and I my some of my best friends are physicians. I mean, I hang out with a lot of physicians. What I found in my personal experience, and I could say this for a lot of things, right? Teachers are seeing everything. So their knowledge is incredible, right? School leaders, they’re so incredible. But pediatricians, they want to please the parent. They’re not learning about all of these things unless they’re seeing a patient come back and getting better or they have their own personal experience. 

At any given time, about one third of all my patients were medical people from pharmacists, a lot of pharmacists, different medical doctors. I have a pediatrician right now. As I’m ending my clinical care, just ending out my last few clients. That always spoke to me, and they would always come to me and be like, why do I not know this stuff? And I’m like, you know it now. And, you know, here’s training. So your training and experience determine what you’re going to recommend. 

And so when I started, I right out of the gate had complex cases. I never saw anybody who had just simple issues and whatnot, occasionally here and there. So I realized real quick that psychiatric medication and talk therapy was not working for my clients. You know, everything from a very heavy neurodivergent population, but pretty layered mental health issues in there on top of that as well. And so I went to the microfiche in the 90s, right.

Angela Kelly: Yes.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Just in case you’re too young, my leaders, it means I went to the belly of the basement and looked on film to find research. And in the first hour, I found, I learned about like vitamin D and food and the impact of these things on your brain. And I was like, holy cow. The great part is I was still in graduate school and I went to my professors and they were like, oh yeah, this stuff’s valid. And I was like, why are we not teaching a whole class on this? 

Anyway, but I always believed that every child could get better. If I had a family that was willing to do the work, right, not perfectly, but to do enough of the work, I saw that people got better. I saw that we actually created generational change. I mean, it’s pretty incredible. But we have to, when a teacher is recommending things, why can’t we give knowledge to parents and say, because the great part about nervous system information is there’s nothing judgmental. It doesn’t factor in your color. It doesn’t factor in what your life experiences are. It just says, wait, here are some behaviors that reflect under stimulation. Here are behaviors that reflect over stimulation. 

And guess what? Here are three or four or five really simple ways to regulate. And what I do in all of my work is I’m really trying to get people to commit to it. So I made it like truly stupid simple, Angela, to do this. Like, it does not matter what you’re bringing to the table. If you’re willing to take micro moments, a few minutes, multiple times throughout the day, you will experience regulation. And then to keep it going, right, I have an action plan, all these other things because what I saw is that I always quote my dad, Tony. My dad, Tony always says, it’s easy with the mouth.

Angela Kelly: Right.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: So it means we can say things, but do we actually do things? And so in this world of information overload, I mean, just absolute information overload. I love me AI, but AI is not going to cut it. You got to do. So I wanted to make it where there was no excuse. And the way I look at nervous system regulation is we need to treat this now as just like brushing our teeth. We brush our teeth to prevent cavities, abscesses, serious infections. We have to do the same thing about nervous system regulation. And, you know, the great part about nervous system regulation, again, easy, free things that you could be doing multiple times a day. 

But the more you do it, the more your nervous system will just start doing it on its own. So the more you regulate, the more your nervous system will want to regulate and do it automatically. And the reverse is, the more you dysregulate, the more your nervous system will automatically go to a dysregulated state. Now, it doesn’t matter how dysregulated you are. You can pull that back. You just have to actually believe it and you have to do some work around it. You can’t just, you know, as I always say, magic wand it.

Angela Kelly: Yes. In the classroom, there are systems we put into place. We teach kids where to put their backpacks when they come in. For the littles, it was like we teach them their name so they know which cubby is theirs, and we teach them how to get a pencil and what to do if they break a pencil and how to get a new pencil and we have all these little systems in place that make the day flow, the operation flow. We have those kinds of systems. 

And when we are doing that, it is to make the day easier for you, for me, for us, right? And this regulation can also be done as like just daily operations in your classroom. This is how it should look and feel on a regular basis. Here’s what to do when you’re dysregulated. Here’s what to do if you’re, you know, you and your friend have a conflict. You’re teaching the regulation skills just like you would teach any other system in your classroom.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Absolutely. And when you’re doing it, right, so there’s two parts to, you know, regulation and coping and managing, you know, things. When you’re regulating in moments of calm, it deepens the calm. It’s easier. It takes that stress out, and you’re creating capacity. And you need capacity for the second part of this when bad things happen, when you have a conflict with a friend, when you’re being excluded. You need to have capacity to think through, problem solve, pull out skills. 

A lot of times, you know, you’ll hear, you know, the kids that get identified, kids that get a 504, kids that get pulled for intervention. You’ll always hear the school social worker, teacher, the person doing the intervention say, well, they know it in the room, right? And they don’t know it out there. And it’s because we’re teaching skills, but we’re not teaching anybody how to regulate. So they go back into the classroom, they dysregulate, the frontal lobes go offline, and they lose the skill. You have to have that ability. 

And I think all of us could think about a time where you’re maxed out and then you’re like, oh, I just can’t do one more thing. But we are adults. Most of us say, hey, like, can we table this till tomorrow? When somebody says that, it’s because they’re done. But kids are learning and they need us to be the leaders in regulation. So if that teacher is leading the classroom, that administrator coming in and is saying, you know, like, hey, who did a love pause today? 

That’s my way of, I have this thing called the three-second love pause. And all it is give yourself three seconds. You pause, you breathe, or you do some type of regulation activity and three, then you respond. If we all took three seconds before we responded, when we’re irritated or a cup is full, we would have a lot less conflict in the world. 

Angela Kelly: Yeah. I agree.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: You know, right? But if we create this environment where this is put in, we all get a reciprocal benefit. The loudest nervous system, right, the nervous system that’s the most regulated, the most nervous system that’s the actually the one that’s the most dysregulated, they start pulling the room. But when you become that calm, this calm starts regulating the dysregulated kid without saying a word. 

And that’s where I think we need this. I really praise the boots on the ground in the classroom because they have a tremendous amount on their plate. And I don’t want to ever hear that we’re getting better at diagnosing. That is bologna and cheese. We have a lot more kids with a lot more issues, end of story. And it has nothing to do with diagnostics.

Angela Kelly: Mhm, that’s so fascinating. 

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Yeah, and I can tell you that. I mean, I’ve been there for 30 years. And you’re also seeing a lot more complexity in the issues. Since the pandemic, you know, yes, I always had complex issues, but now, since the pandemic, it’s just layer upon layer. And people really, I don’t know if some kids and some families never fully recovered from that pandemic time. And we’ve certainly gone further into device usage, which again is not the devil, but it needs moderation, it needs boundaries in advance, and nobody’s talking, I mean, I have a whole chapter on that. 

But we need to be better at helping us all manage it, including myself. I mean, I’m do things all the time to keep my device away from me because it just is too convenient. It fits in your hand and it’s just too accessible. So we have to start from within. We have to implement things that anybody can do. And that’s what things like breath work and somatics, they’re simple, small things that are absolutely part of the daily schedule. And I know teachers, I’ve been there, they’ll say, well, I already have a lot of things in my schedule. 

Well, what this is designed to do is to free up all the reminders you’re doing, constantly bringing a kid back on task, constantly managing behavior, because again, a dysregulated kid, he can look like a kid with ADHD, he can look like a kid who’s violent. It’s his nervous system’s response to stressors that might seem invisible to you.

Angela Kelly: It can also be your A plus student who’s super quiet in the back of the room but is so internally stressed and worried about like not getting the A, and they don’t speak up. They could totally be in fight or flight, but you don’t register it because it’s not a very explosive expression of dysregulation.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Yeah. I mean, those are our internalizers, right? Those are those kids that are understimulated. And those kids I see more and more because we use grades as a benchmark for mental health. And I’m not saying educators do, but I’m saying that as a society, we do say, okay, well, they’re an A student, how could they be suicidal? Or they’re an A student, how could they have severe OCD? These are real conversations that I’ve had with…

Angela Kelly: I believe you, 100%.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: And we wait for the crash and burn, and those perfectionistic kids, I really don’t believe, and trust me, I practice this. I really don’t believe every kid should be in all honors classes. It’s just not necessary. I’m sorry. It’s not. Not everybody’s going to Yale and Harvard people. And I get it if that’s your ticket out because financially a kid needs to get a scholarship. Okay, I understand. I’m not naive. But we have all kinds of kids just, oh, burning the candles at both ends. There is a physiological limit. Now, on the other hand, as somebody who constantly is doing things all day to regulate themselves, I have a capacity to actually do a lot more than another an average person. 

So not only do I handle stress well, I can handle problems right in the moment better than 90% of people I know, even my people I love. Regulating first isn’t just a concept, it’s really something that we can take action on and bring to the table. It’s not getting rid of SEL curriculum. Heck no. What I’m saying is that’s going to get absorbed. You’re going to actually get better outcomes. We get better grades. Every school has to have certain standards. And so it starts bringing equity and accessibility regardless of what kind of district you have, regardless of what your students have at home, it helps makes the curriculum much more accessible, all curriculum, not just academic.

Angela Kelly: Beautiful. I love this conversation. I just want to close out by reminding everybody that when you regulate your nervous system, you actually create more bandwidth. So for us busy school leaders whose plates are full and overflowing, when you learn to self-regulate, you actually expand your capacity to do more because you’re able to regulate and keep going. Same will be true for teachers and same will be true for students. 

So this work, this self-regulation, learning these skills, having teachers teach this in their classrooms, and then teaching students how to do it, that is going to expand your entire, you know, school’s capacity to, I want to say more productive, but not in a way that’s from stress and pressure and force, it’s from a capacity building standpoint. Would you say?

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Yeah, oh, absolutely. You’re just going to have more capacity for so many things in your life, having patience for others, grace for yourself, because I think we’re all so overloaded. Teachers are predominantly women. Women have a lot on their shoulders. I’m not saying dads don’t either. My husband’s amazing. But we are now just so maxed out. 

And I think we think that, what I want to say is little micro moments are like putting money in your 401k, and it starts building and building and building, and we have to do this. You can’t just wait for the running on the weekend or a massage every two weeks. That’s not cutting it. You need to start bringing this into your daily life multiple times a day, and it’s easy, easy, easy, easy. This is not going to be something that’s riding on your shoulders. You’re going to start doing it automatically because it just creates capacity on a personal and professional level. Educators will be better human beings.

Angela Kelly: Wonderful. What a great way to kick off this new school year. Rosanne, thank you for your time. Thank you for being on this podcast. I’m so happy to see you. I’m so glad to hear you’re doing well and the book is now launching and I want to get this into the hands of all school leaders. I think it’s so important. I teach it at the school leadership level. You’re teaching it at the parental and, you know, teacher level, student level, and just thank you for being so willing to share your expertise, your wisdom, and knowledge with us today.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Well, thank you for this conversation.

Angela Kelly: It’s been so fun. Let’s do it again.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge: Absolutely.

Angela Kelly: All right, take care. That’s it, folks. We’ve got to wrap up. She’s got another appointment and I’ve got to run. So have a beautiful week. Please let us know how this impacted you, how it inspired you, and how it’s setting you up for success in your upcoming school year. Have a wonderful week. Talk to you soon. Take care. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 447. 

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not-so-typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host, certified life coach Angela Kelly. 

Well, hello my empowered leaders. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. And hey, if you’re a brand new school leader and you’re just now learning about The Empowered Principal® Podcast, we welcome you. I’m so happy you are here. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, your strength, your gifts with your school, your colleagues, your students, the world. It is such a delight to meet you here through the podcast. So, definitely shout out, say hello, come say hello on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever you find yourself hanging out with fellow school leaders. We would love to have you a member of our empowered principal community. So welcome.

Today, I’m going to drop the secrets of successful school leadership and successful school leaders. These secrets were inspired by my own failures. Everything that I’ve done wrong as a school leader and the insights, the experience, the wisdom, the knowledge that I have gained in my own mistakes, my own coaching while I was a principal, I had a coach, a life coach, but life and leadership go hand in hand, and in my experience and in my learning over the last decade as a coach helping other school leaders become very successful.

And I thought, I’m going to write these out in terms of how I experience them and things I’ve observed and things I’ve read, things I’ve experienced. And I’m saying them straight away. And I want to preface these secrets in that some will really resonate with you. Others won’t. That’s okay. These are just my personal experiences, what I have learned, what I believe to be true, and what I’ve observed in other people. So some will hit, some will land, some won’t. That’s okay.

Some of them, they will feel very aligned. You’ll be like, yes, that’s so true. I believe that. And others will trigger you. They will awaken you. They will jolt you. You’ll have a little identity shake for a minute. That’s okay. They’re not intended to make you feel any kind of pain. They’re intended to create awareness and to create alignment and to just awaken you and engage you in who you want to be, how you want to feel, and the approach you would desire to take in leadership. That’s simply what these are.

These are the secrets I have found. I would love to hear what you think when you listen to this podcast. So, if you would so delight me in sharing your thoughts, your questions in either the Facebook group or you can message me personally on Facebook or Instagram. I do hang out on LinkedIn every now and then, but primarily Facebook and Instagram. And tell me what you think, because they’re here to support, to empower, to help you, okay? All right. I’m just going to read them as I wrote them, and I will leave it at that.

Successful school leaders believe that they have power and agency, regardless of their title, position, or status. They believe that they always contain personal power, personal agency.

Struggling leaders, on the other hand, believe that other people, situations, circumstances, things outside of their being have power over them and that they lack personal agency.

Successful leaders focus on their successes. They think about them, they study them, they celebrate them, they acknowledge them.

Struggling leaders tend to focus on their failures, the disappointments, the not reaching the goals, the disappointments, the rejections, all of the things that didn’t go right. That’s where they’re spending their time, their energy, their attention, and their focus.

Successful leaders are committed to empowerment. They’re dedicated to it. They’re convicted to experiencing and expanding their personal power.

Struggling leaders are very committed to comfort. They don’t want to go out of their comfort zone. They like to stay in what they know.

Successful leaders stay connected to their vision and allow the vision to grow bigger and to be bigger than they think they can even achieve. They let it go big.

Struggling leaders tend to dim their vision when challenges arise. They don’t want to dream big because they don’t want to be disappointed. They want to be there, not here. And they feel like they’re chasing the end of a rainbow. And when challenges arise, they dim. They go small. Successful leaders play big. Struggling leaders play small.

Successful leaders frame obstacles as opportunities for improvement. They look at it as an awareness tool to say, oh, I didn’t realize this was a problem, but now that it is, let’s create a solution. Let’s create an answer. Let’s improve this.

Struggling leaders frame obstacles as reasons why things can’t improve. It’s either themselves, the obstacle itself, other people. That’s the reason. That’s the excuse as to why we can’t improve, that things will never change.

Successful leaders collaborate and seek to engage with like-minded leaders. They connect with fellow leaders who are positive and empowered. They want to connect with people of the same mindset.

Struggling leaders will isolate and hide for the fear that they’ll be seen as incompetent, ineffective, or incapable. And they want to protect and hide themselves, so they will self-isolate, and then they say that they feel lonely in the job. But successful leaders don’t feel lonely. They’re out there engaging and collaborating and having conversations and joining groups and going to conferences and calling their friends and colleagues.

Successful leaders believe they can handle whatever comes their way and that their ability to problem solve is greater than the problem itself.

Struggling leaders believe that the problem is greater or bigger than their capacity to handle whatever comes their way.

Successful leaders give feedback and are equally willing to receive it.

Struggling leaders fear giving feedback and they fear receiving feedback. They fear feedback because they label it as insufficient. If you’re getting feedback, you’re insufficient. If you’re giving it but you’re insufficient, then you’re an imposter. There is a relationship with feedback that determines success and struggling leaders.

Successful school leaders trust that they are equipped with the resources they need, and they leverage those resources, the ones that they actually have.

Struggling leaders will lack trust in themselves and in the resources available to them. They think that something outside of themselves or outside of what they already have available to them is the answer. This leaves struggling leaders chasing, always chasing external answers, the next shiny object, the next prize, the next solution. They think that it’s outside of them. They don’t understand that the solution is within.

Successful leaders trust in the ever abundance of time.

Struggling leaders focus on a lack of time.

Successful school leaders plan and prepare, and then they allow for that plan and all those preparations to go right out the window. They plan and prepare, but then they detach from the plan, trusting that what does come up is now the new plan.

Struggling leaders will plan, prepare, and then attach to the plan and become very frustrated when the plan changes, and then give up on planning and preparing because what’s the point? And then they are underprepared.

Successful leaders empower their teams to work for the greater good. They will onboard, train, and delegate.

Struggling leaders disempower themselves and other people by trying to do it all, know it all, be it all, and control it all. Onboarding plus delegation equals success.

Successful leaders manage their emotions and their minds very well.

Struggling leaders allow their emotions and their mind to manage them.

Successful leaders understand that fear is just a normal part of the leadership emotional experience. They allow it to be present, and they move forward anyway.

Struggling leaders will interpret fear as something’s gone wrong, and I need to steer away from this, to avoid the actions that bring up fear.

Successful leaders embody lifelong learning. They embrace being new, and they value personal and professional development and evolution.

Struggling leaders will prioritize comfort, ease, and the familiar.

I’m going to leave it here and allow you to ponder. And I know some of these may feel triggering for you, but let them in a good way, a very healthy way. Notice, did any of these feel offensive or anger you in any way? If so, why? What comes up for you? Is it defensiveness? Do you feel the desire to try and justify yourself or explain it away or reject it all together to argue it, to avoid it, to ignore it? 

Because remember, all of these came from things that I have done. I have pretended to know. I have had a lack of time. I’ve had a lot of scarcity around resources. I’ve believed that the solution was out of me. I didn’t think I was capable enough. I’ve had all the thoughts, and they lead to inaction or small action, less impactful action.

You can see these secrets as opportunities for awareness, alignment, momentum, and growth. And as I’ve said, I have been on the struggling side of each of these, personally. And I have also been able to embrace the successful mindset. And not in a way that I’ve arrived and I’m never going to struggle again, but really as just an awareness tool, like, oh, I recognize this pattern of thinking. I’ve done this before. I’ve seen this before. I’m aware again. Now that I’m aware, I can redirect, reframe, realign, and get back into momentum.

Because this list, and it’s just a list, there’s a million more truths out there in terms of leadership secrets, but these are for me personally, they allow me to adjust and to focus on successful trains of thought. And at the end of the day, this list of secrets is really nothing more than just at least for me, truths that I have observed in both myself and in the hundreds of people I’ve worked with over the course of my career. 

And now, they’re no longer secrets. I’ve given them to you. They’re opportunities, and they are available to you. So listen to this, print out the transcript, read it over, notice which ones align, which ones feel a little crunchy, and work with them. See if you can get into alignment with them. See if they work for you. And if they don’t, drop them. They’re not etched in stone. They’re just my personal experience.

But if this really resonates with you, if it ignites you and excites you, then the Empowered Principal programs were designed exactly for someone like you, a school leader like you, whether you join the Empowered Principal Collaborative, which is a group coaching program, or you decide to jump into EPA, which is a deep dive intensive instructional coaching and mentoring program, or if you’re personally drawn to one-on-one coaching, which is very private, customized, and personalized to your specific experiences, whichever way you’re leaning, these programs were designed for you. Have a beautiful week. I love you all. Take good care, and we’ll talk next week. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 445.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly.

Hello, my Empowered Principals. Happy Tuesday, and welcome to the podcast. I am in such empowered energy. I feel new beginnings coming for all of us. I recently recorded a Facebook Live in the Empowered Principal Facebook group. So for those of you who haven’t yet joined us, please join us. We would love to have you in there. We are in the middle of the Summer of Fun challenge, and we are having fun. I hope that you will join us because when you join us, when you comment, when you post, when you like, you’re entered into a drawing to win $1,111 worth of Empowered Principal credits towards any of my coaching programs.

And I’m going to be talking more about the coaching programs for the upcoming school year because July is the new beginning. It’s the new month of the new contract. It’s the new energy of a new school year. We are planning, we are preparing for great things to happen. And what I love about new beginning energy is that anything is possible. It’s a fresh start. It is a clean slate. So, let’s talk about new beginnings, and then I’m going to tell you all about the upcoming programs for the 2026-27 school year. All right.

New beginnings, what are they? When I think about a new beginning, a new beginning is starts with a thought. It starts with a desire. We desire to experience something new. We desire to try something new, to start something new, to learn something new, to experience something new. It starts with a desire. And it also starts with a belief that we are capable of having or trying or experiencing the new thing, that we are capable of learning, that we are capable of having, that we are capable of experiencing, that we are capable of accomplishing it. We have a desire. The desire is the hunger, the drive, the energy, the fuel, the emotions behind it.

So when you think about new beginnings for you, the first year you ever taught was a new beginning. That was a first year. You had dreams, you had visions of what teaching would look like and feel like. You dreamed the experience. You had a desire to educate, to connect with kids, to make an impact on their lives and in the greater world. And then you get into that first year, and it isn’t exactly what you envisioned, right? It’s new. It’s uncharted territory. It’s trailblazing. It’s the first time you’ve ever done something.

And then at the end of that first year, you have thoughts and feelings and opinions about the year, about that first year. And what happens with a new beginning is we go through the new beginning, it’s all uncharted, we don’t know what we don’t know until we experience it. We have ups, we have downs, we have wins, we have fails, we have great days, we have terrible days. We shed tears of joy, tears of sadness and grief and pain and regrets or reflection. And at the end of that new beginning, what we do is we’re like, okay, I don’t want to experience the pain points of that new beginning, so I’m going to brace myself for the next year upcoming. I’m going to think about all the things that didn’t work and I’m going to fix them so I don’t have to experience that again. But I’m going to bring this year with me into year two.

But what we do if we’re not careful is we bring everything with us, the good, bad, and the ugly. So we bring the wisdom. Here’s what I learned about classroom management. I’m going to change these things this year. This is the wisdom I’ve gained from my new beginning. But I didn’t like this, so I’m going to brace for that. I’m going to try to prepare because I expect that bad things could happen and I don’t want bad things to happen.

So new beginnings are that fresh start. I want to offer something about new beginnings. We actually desire new beginnings. We don’t want to experience the same year over and over and over. So for those of you who are brand new, coming into school leadership, you are already perfectly aligned with the new leadership energy. You’re already in it. You don’t have to think about it or to align yourself. You’re right there. So stay with me here.

And for those of you who are veterans, this is especially important for you to consider. When we are veterans, it can be easy to go on autopilot. It’s like learning to drive. In the beginning, you are very aware of all the gadgets, all the lights, all the sounds, all the buzzing, all the cars around you, very, very hyper-aware because we want to do it right, we want to be careful, we don’t know what we’re doing. We turn the radio off, we are focusing, concentrating. It’s brand new. But after a few years, we just get in and we’re on autopilot and sometimes we don’t even remember actually driving because our thoughts were elsewhere. But it’s rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

The same thing can be true for the school year. It’s like, well, last year sucked, so this year’s probably going to suck, so I probably should prepare to brace myself or try to avoid as much suckiness as possible, right? We anticipate the pain points. We anticipate what could go wrong, and then we end up preparing ourselves for the worst-case scenario while not really anticipating the best-case scenario. We’re thinking like, oh gosh, this group of students, this staff, this community, this group of parents, they’re really tough, so next year’s going to be tough as well versus I extract what I learned from last year. I glean the wisdom like I scrape the wisdom off the top, but I release the rest. I honor the pain, I honor the learning points, I celebrate the wins, I celebrate the good in all of last year, but I release it.

If we can go into the new school year as an actual new school year with a brand new fresh lens, imagine going into your school and meeting your teachers again for the first time, meeting families and students again for the first time, being on that campus again for the first time, looking around, noticing the little things, being the first-day driver, being in that seat where you’re looking around, noticing such awareness, such deep awareness of every little detail. Because here’s the truth, your students coming in are not the same students they were at the beginning of last year. They’re different humans. They’re different little people. Your staff, they are not the same staff that you had last year. They have changed, they have grown, they are different people.

Just as you, over the summer, have grown, have evolved. You might not think so, but you have, whether that’s you’ve gotten physical rest, you’ve spent time with your family and friends, you’ve filled that emotional bucket, you’ve had a lot of fun in the Summer of Fun challenge, you’ve gone on your trips, you’ve been to leadership retreats, you’ve done strategic planning with your community and your stakeholders, whatever it is that you have done in the last month, six weeks, eight weeks, you have evolved, you’ve changed.

So nobody coming into your school is the same human, and yet we label people based on the past all of the time. We label ourselves based on the past all of the time versus looking through the lens of a new beginning, a fresh start, truly a fresh start. Because the truth is every single minute of every single day is a fresh start, a fresh opportunity. And our experience as school leaders, our experience as students and staff and families, community, the experience that we have is based on how we’re thinking, what we’re focusing on. Are we focusing on the past? Are we making assumptions about the past? Or are we putting on a new lens and looking through the lens of fresh starts, new beginnings?

I’m telling you, school leaders out there, you have the opportunity in your hands to create an entirely different experience this year simply by going into your mind and into your heart and allowing things to be brand new, looking through the lens of newness, fresh starts, not labeling kids, trusting that they have changed and evolved, treating them with empowerment, treating them with respect in the sense of honoring who they’ve become, giving them a fresh start, a clean slate.

You know when you make a mistake with a friend or a partner or a colleague and you feel terrible about it and you’ve apologized, you’ve made it right, you’ve tried to repair and move forward, and you’re telling yourself and telling them, “I’m going to be better, do better.” You want to be forgiven. You want a clean slate. You want people to not continue to label you for that thing that you did back in last October. You want a clean slate. Our kids want that too. Our teachers want that too.

And so if you’re having a hard time giving people new beginnings, why is that? That’s the internal work. What is the fear? Usually, in my work with clients, the fear is they’ll do it to me again. Shame on me. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me, right? And we are afraid to trust. We’re afraid to think of people with a clean slate to remove the labels because what happens if they do it again?

So let’s go down the path. Let’s say you come in with the old lens on, the lens of last year, the lens of, new school year, same stuff, same people, same game, same cast of characters here. So you’re going to come in with predetermined expectations of who’s going to behave well, who’s not going to behave well, who’s going to achieve, who’s not going to achieve, who’s going to be in an intervention, who’s not going to be in an intervention, what teachers are going to do well, what grade levels are going to do well, what departments are going to do well. We already kind of come in with the script already written for the school year. And that script will play out if this is what you believe will happen, because what you believe will happen is what will happen.

So this work is about playing a new game, a new beginning. What if we wrote a new script? What if we tried something different? And you can play around this summer right now. You can try a new food, you can try a new way to work, try a new coffee shop, try a new department store, try a new grocery store, whatever. Try something new just to get comfortable and normalize trying new things, new beginnings, fresh starts. Start a new morning routine. If you love your morning routine, start a new evening routine. Pick a routine you’d like to try something new at and just try it because what we do in school is we brace ourselves for what we think already is. We already have decided what it will be and then it plays out that way.

You don’t want the school year to look like last year. And even if you had an amazing school year, you want this year to be a different kind of amazing, with new heights, new achievements, new accomplishments, new connections, new collaborations. You still want new, even when it’s good. We try to avoid change when things are good, and we desperately beg for change when things are bad, yet we don’t really believe they’ll turn around for us.

If there’s one thing, one gift I could leave in the world of education, it is the understanding that our thoughts are energy. Our emotions are fuel, energetic fuel for our actions. So our thoughts are energy that trigger emotional energy, that trigger actionable energy, that trigger outcomes and results. If we could see that what we believe is what we create, is the outcomes we create, if we could really harness that, you would have a new beginning every day, every week, every month, every season, every year. You would look through the lens like a child looks through the lens. Every Christmas is the best Christmas. Every birthday, they’re excited. Every school year, right? Until they also start to realize same year, same school, it’s going to just be the same thing over and over. “I didn’t like school last year. I’m not going to like school this year.” They too get into that kind of vortex of negativity, of stagnancy.

So why don’t we do this? Why don’t we simply decide that we are going to look through the lens of new beginnings? This is a new beginning. This can be an entirely different school year, whether you are technically brand new in the job or whether you’ve been doing this for 20 years. Look through the lens of brand new, different. What is it you want to see? Pretend you’re putting on brand new glasses for the first time and you’re looking through your campus, you’re meeting people. Can you imagine going up to the person that you struggled with last year and being genuinely happy to see them, shaking their hand, looking forward to working with them because you know that they’ve gone through change? And your energy and you believing in them will be reflected back to you. And because people have free will, even when people, when they human, and they make mistakes or they behave in old patterns, you can know that people will still behave in old patterns, and you can still respond differently. You can change and make it new by changing the way you respond even when they respond the same way. That’s how you create new.

So, yes, people have free will to behave how they want. We don’t control their behavior, but your energy coming in, assuming positive intention, assuming professional and personal growth, assuming evolution, evolvement, assuming desire in them, you can meet them and they can meet you however they’re going to meet you, but the way that you interact, the way you set your intentions, the way you project your energy, that’s the new thing. And that’s what we’re doing in the world of the Empowered Principal. That’s what this podcast is about. That’s what the Facebook group is about. That’s what my programming is all about, my paid programming.

So if you desire to see through a new lens, to experience school leadership in an entirely different way, to feel the excitement and engagement of being new, anticipating great things, preparing, expecting that great things will come. You know how you go on vacation? The anticipation is half the fun. When you’re shopping and you’re packing, you’re anticipating a good outcome, a positive experience. You’re expecting great things, great memories. Very few people plan a vacation so that they can doom and gloom and anticipate everything going wrong. I’m sure there’s people out there who do that, but most of us, the reason we go on vacation, we are preparing to receive a positive experience. I want us to do that with our school year.

We’re going to pack and prepare and plan as though everything’s going to be amazing, even though we know it might rain a couple of days on our vacation, or even when a suitcase goes missing and shows up a week late, there will be hiccups in our vacation, but we’re focused on the great things. We’re preparing and expecting for an amazing school year. We’re packing for it, we’re planning for it, we’re preparing for it, we’re onboarding for it, we’re showing up in the anticipation of amazing accomplishments, amazing connections, amazing collaborations. We are expecting it. That’s what new beginnings is about.

So, for this coming year, there are some new beginnings in the world of the Empowered Principal. Are you ready for it? Okay. I have three offers for this coming year. Offer number one is my standard, classic one-on-one coaching. This is where I started. It’s the foundation of my work. For the first few years of my business, I only coached one-on-one. I started with one client, and then two, and then I had four, and then I had six, and then it was 10, and then it got up to 24. I had 24 one-on-one clients, which I was bursting at the seams because I was coaching for an hour per client plus extra bonus calls as they needed them.

So I was coaching over 24 hours a week plus all of the back-end work. That’s when I decided to launch EPC, the Empowered Principal Collaborative. It’s a group mastermind. It’s a group coaching program for people who love to connect, who love to collaborate, who love to be around like-minded people. It’s a more mastermind experience. It’s a weekly group coaching program. We meet via Zoom. It’s once a week, but the beautiful thing about EPC is that it’s a collaborative. You are hearing other people’s wins, fails, successes, trials, challenges, and they’re getting coached on it, which coaches you. You feel not alone in this group. Other people are going through some of the similar things that you’re going through. It’s synergy. I think it’s one of the most empowering ways to learn and to be coached.

One-on-one is excellent for very high-level coaching, and it’s excellent for beginning coaching. It kind of hits on the ends. If you need confidential, private coaching because you’re going through something very sensitive in nature and you need to discuss things, but you can’t discuss them publicly or in a group, one-on-one is perfect. EPC, the collaborative, is for masterminding, working together, synergy. It’s for momentum, making motion, and to have fun along the way. We have a lot of fun. We laugh, we cry, we do all the things. But this is a group where you get to talk about the real emotional experience, the real experience of school leadership. That’s EPC. It’s a mastermind collaborative.

And the new and upcoming, I’m so excited, the new and upcoming program, this is brand new, new beginnings, fresh starts, is the Empowered Principal Academy. Now, listen up. This is the first week of July. The Empowered Principal Academy is starting in two weeks. This is not a program that you’re going to sit on and think about and wonder if you should or shouldn’t. You either are going to do it this year or you’re going to wait until next year. The Empowered Principal Academy was developed to help school leaders like yourself bring out the best in those you lead. The art and science of coaching is the practice of embracing empowerment for you as a coach, as a mentor, as a leader. Those are three different roles that you play. I’m teaching the art and the science of coaching to bring your people up, to empower them.

I want you to imagine each member of your staff and student community fully embodying their own empowerment because coaching at its soul, at its heart is the beauty of evolution and creation. It is a gift that you give to your staff of expansion, where you have the opportunity to provide others the experience of expanding and evolving and developing and creating their new beginnings, their new opportunities. You want your teachers to expand and grow. You want them to be continually evolving who they are, what they do, how they do it, what they believe, what they accomplish, the lives that they touch, because coaching is opportunity for us, for them, for the greater good. It’s about our identity evolving as a leader and adding the mastery of coaching into our identity. It’s about providing opportunity and identity expansion for our staff and our students because we want them to own their own empowerment. Mastering the art of coaching is going to develop you as a master at school leadership.

And I have been coaching for a decade. It is time that I share the tools, the tips, the strategies, the questions, the communication, the conversations, the how of coaching. And the Empowered Principal Academy is going to offer you just that. We’re starting mid-July. You’re going to learn, there’s going to be several sessions where you learn by firehose, and then there will be a monthly meeting. We will focus on a particular aspect of coaching. We will be integrating that particular aspect of coaching into our work that month, and you will be connecting with me and receiving feedback and being able to ask questions so that by the end of the year, you will graduate with a certificate in the art of coaching through the Empowered Principal Academy.

So here are the details. For one-on-one coaching, there is a link in the show notes for an individual consult. You and I will jump on the phone for about 45 minutes to an hour. You’re going to tell me everything that you think I need to know so that I can help you at an individual level and expedite your situation, expedite your coaching, expedite your leadership. If you’re considering the Empowered Principal Collaborative, there is a registration link in the show notes for EPC. If you are interested in the Empowered Principal Academy, there are two ways that you can connect with the academy.

Number one, if you have more questions or you want to talk with me directly, there is a link for a 20-minute meet and greet session. We can Q&A, we can talk about all the things. I can get you the information you need. You can schedule that. The link is in the show notes to schedule a short Q&A conversation with me over the phone. If you’re ready to sign up for EPA, there is a registration link in the show notes. Every link that you need is in the show notes. Simply click on the link, you will get more information from that link, and there’s also the link to schedule a personal phone call with me. I will answer any questions you have. I’ll take the time you need for you to explore what option you feel is best for you.

I personally believe with all of my heart, this is the most impactful professional development you could ever engage with because it’s not a one-and-done. It’s not about platforms and curriculums and what you should be doing that you’re not or what you should stop doing that feels essential. It’s about energy, leadership wealth, leadership energetics. It’s about you, developing you so that you can develop them so that you can develop the world for the greater good.

This is unlike any other leadership experience I’ve ever had, and I’ve developed it through my own work, my own study of humans, of communication, of my thoughts and feelings, of life coaching, of leadership coaching, and I’ve combined it into one package for you. That’s what the podcast is for and all of my paid programming is all about. You will come out of these programs, regardless of which one you choose, a different person, new beginnings, all of the time. You’re ever-evolving, you’re ever-growing, and these programs simply help guide you, help strengthen you, help you see what’s already there within you. You have what it takes. Your empowerment is there, accessible, ready to go.

Let’s have the most beautiful new beginning of the 2026-27 school year. I can’t wait to meet you and work with you. Have the most beautiful, beautiful week. I’ll talk with you soon.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 443. 

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host, certified life coach Angela Kelly. 

Well, hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday and welcome to this week’s podcast. I hope you are having the most delightful June ever, and if you like to have fun and you’re not in our Facebook group yet, come on in. What are you doing? We’re having so much fun in the Summer of Fun Challenge. I’ve really reconnected with myself again with my willingness to be open and alive and engaged and to have fun and to be lighthearted and to release some of the heaviness that I have been carrying for the last couple of years. I feel it. I feel the release and it is manifesting in the Summer of Fun Challenge. We are having so much fun and I’m really celebrating everyone who is participating. It’s wonderful. 

And if you are there, I am so excited that you are there. And if you’re not there, we are so inviting you to come in and join us because you deserve to have fun. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to release the weights and the burdens of all of this responsibility we take on throughout the year, and you deserve a time and a space to slow down, to take a breath, to take in life, to take in the world around you, to laugh with the people you love, to spend time with yourself and people that you care about, to explore your communities, your world, to just be engaged with all aspects of your life, not only in your professional capacity. So, come on in to Summer of Fun Challenge. We’re having a blast.

All right. I want to talk about a topic that I am expanding my understanding of and my wisdom of. So there has been a decade of you hearing me say, “the Land of And.” I talk about the Land of And all of the time, and I embrace living in the Land of And. And I love the concept of the Land of And. So what do I mean when I say the Land of And? Originally, when this phrase came to me, it was early on in my coaching career. And I was coaching a client on having a conversation, and we were talking about having this conversation in creating and preparing for it in a way that was a win-win, a win for you and a win for them. 

And then I was coaching another client on making a decision about her career and where she wanted to land and what kind of job she wanted to be in. And we talked about the Land of And. Could it be possible that you could have this and this? Could you be in the position that you want and be aligned with your district? Could you be serving in the capacity you wish to serve and still have time for yourself, your friends, and your family? Can you have both?

So the Land of And is a concept that I created around abundance. I can experience this and that. I can create this and that. I can do this and that. I desire to have this and that. So when I was coaching on the Land of And, I was always asking people like, when you’re looking at a situation you’re facing or a problem you’re trying to solve or, you know, a conversation you are trying to express and decide how you want to communicate with that person, where’s the Land of And? Where’s the win-win? Where is the yes and frequency? Okay?

And lately, as I have been studying my own work and reapplying it to new situations in my life, because all of this that I teach on the podcast, if we could call it teaching, or that I share, things that I think of to, you know, concepts, exercises, strategies, tips, practices, whatever you want to label them as, the work that I’m doing here as a coach, my first responsibility is to apply the work to myself. And as a human, there are moments where I am totally locked in in alignment with the work that I teach and the coaching that I provide and the mentorship that I offer. 

And there are times where I get out of alignment, just as you feel there are times where you are in alignment and times where you are not in alignment. I’m a human. This happens for me too. Being a coach, as you know, being a school leader doesn’t mean you always know exactly how to lead or that you always lead yourself or lead your life exactly in the way you think it should be done or you sometimes lose sight of where you’re going on your journey. Coaches do that too, okay?

So in this work, I’ve noticed that I have been talking about the Land of And, and there are situations in which the Land of And doesn’t actually fully apply. So what are some of these examples? So I think about life in general, and obviously I think about school leadership, but we’re all one package. 

So when I coach people, it might start about professional conversations or leadership conversations or vision or culture or student behavior or climate issues, but it always ends up going back to personal, personal relationships that are impacting people, whether that’s at work or at home, interpersonal or intrapersonal where you are working with yourself and you’re having conflicting thoughts and feelings inside of yourself and it feels like there is a dissonance within you that you can’t seem to unblock or to release.

So where does the Land of And not apply? And I’ve noticed that it’s when we are using it to have one foot in and one foot out. When you’re thinking to yourself, this is working, but this isn’t working. It’s working, it’s not working. Is it working? Is it not working? Today I trust, no, I don’t trust. I don’t believe. I doubt, no doubt, doubt, no doubt. It’s when we’re half in, half out. It’s like if you were, you have a goal of losing weight. I’m losing a little bit of weight, but I’m also want to indulge. I’m a Land of And. I’m going to lose weight and I’m going to indulge. You’re not all in. You’re not fully committed. You’ve got two opposing desires, two opposing goals. 

Or when you are in your, you know, daily work and you’re thinking to yourself, oh, this is a problem. And you’re like, well, no, maybe it’s not a problem. Maybe I’ll just let it let it sit there. I’m not going to really address it. Is it a problem? Should I address it? No, I don’t want to address it. No, it’s not a problem. It’s not that big of a problem.

So it’s when we are in the land of the miserable maybe. Maybe this, maybe that. Maybe it’s working, maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m going to lose weight, maybe I’m going to indulge. Maybe this is a problem, maybe this isn’t. It’s when you’re sitting on the fence. One day I’m committed, the next day I’m not. This is a problem I should address it, but I don’t know how or I don’t really want to. Such a pain, right?

And then, this is where the work really landed internally for me, was looking through the lens of life, of whether that’s in my business, in my personal life, relationships, financial situation, romantic situations, friendships, family, you know, all of the facets of our life. Looking through the lens of, this is a problem. This is a problem in my business. This is a problem in my friendships. This is a problem in my romantic life. This is a problem in my marriage. This is a problem with my finances. This is a problem with my business. This is a problem with my clients. This is a problem in my marketing. Problem, problem, problem. 

And I’m looking through that lens. It’s a problem. But then, not a problem. I’m either going to look through the lens of it’s a problem and everything’s a problem, and when I think everything has a problem, every facet of my life has a problem, I’m going to be overwhelmed and I’m going to either overcompensate or I’m going to shut down.

When I think of the Land of And in its cleanest form, the Land of And concept is a mindset of abundance. It’s, I am expanding my capacity to hold space in my life, time, space, attention, focus, and I’m holding in, I’m growing and expanding internally my capacity to hold more tension, pressure, expectation, higher standards, and to hold that for longer periods of time, extended chapters of my life. And I can do both. 

I can experience the highs and the joys and the, you know, ecstasies of life, the joys, the pleasures, the highest of highs, and I’m not afraid to also hold space and the tension of deep sadness and grief and loss and disappointment and defeat and discouragement and guilt and shame and, you know, bouts of regret. I’ve always felt like our emotions are on a rubber band. They’re like a spectrum that can be stretched, but if you stretch in one direction, you have to stretch in the other. 

And most people play at plus two, minus two. They’re like, I can feel a little bit of happiness, but I can only take so much sadness. So therefore, like our capacity for more joy is stunted because we can’t expand to the negative. I’m willing to feel the good, but I’m not willing to feel the bad. But there’s duality. There has to be that dichotomy. There has to be the mirror image.

And the Land of And is like, as I’m expanding, evolving, and growing as a school leader, as the leader of my life, as a woman in the world, as a mother, as a sister, as a daughter, as a friend, as a sibling, as whatever it is. And you can flip this to whatever you identify as, whether that’s male or it doesn’t matter. Any type of human can expand their capacity to be both, to increase their capacity for pain so that they can also increase their capacity for joy.

When you became a school leader, your rubber band got stretched. It was like, okay, you want to try this out? Here we go. We’re going to expand you. We’re going to put you in leadership boot camp here and emotional boot camp, and we’re going to stretch your capacity to hold the tension of having a problem that can’t easily be solved. Can you get up and go to work and still have joy while also knowing there are problems at your school? Can you do both? Can you hold the Land of And there? 

Can you be lighthearted while also holding the pressure of really heavy topics and really heavy situations coming across your desk at school? Can you expand your capacity to make decisions knowing that half of the time, half of the people aren’t going to like them? No matter what you decide, there will be tension, there will be people who dislike you. Can you hold space for both a decisive leader where half the people love the decision you’re making and love who you are as a leader, and half of the people are disgruntled? Can you hold that? That’s abundance when you can do both.

And then there is the all or none mindset where I tended to coach saying like, oh, that’s an all or none mindset. You’re throwing the baby out with the bath water. It’s, you know, you dribble one drip of coffee on your paper and you throw the whole paper away, right? Or you, you know, you have one bad minute at work and now the whole day’s shot. This all or none thinking. 

And so I would, you know, point this out to say, is this how you want to experience the day? You’ve had this one bad or this one uncomfortable conversation. Can you hold space for both? Like to have that hard conversation and then to go out and connect with somebody in a way that feels really, really good, and then there’s the duality in your day. There’s the 50/50 of the school leadership experience.

So when we’re working on our goals, we can use the Land of And to not fully commit, to say we’re all in, but then not be all in. I want this and that. So we have to be onto ourselves and be honest with ourselves in that the all or none concept when it’s you’re making a decision, I’m all in or this is not the right time, I’m going to release that. And that requires trust and faith and commitment. So when you’re all in, it requires a lot of trust, faith, and commitment, and when you’re out, it requires trust, faith, and commitment. You got to stay out, right? 

It’s like staying out of somebody else’s lane. You want to go micromanage somebody? You got to get in their lane. If you want to commit to micromanaging them, let them go and then do their entire job. Be all in their lane, 100%. Or if you’re making a decision, I’m no longer a leader who micromanages, I have to have trust, I have to have faith, and I have to have full-on commitment that I’m not going to start swimming in their lane. 

It doesn’t mean I don’t check in on them and talk with them and ask them where they’re at and discuss the standards of the position and discuss the expectations, but then you release that because you’re trusting and you’re having faith that they’re committed because you’re committed. You’re committed to not micromanaging them, but you are committed to trusting and believing in them, which then they raise up. Hopefully, that’s the plan. They rise to the occasion and they are fully committed because you’re not in there trying to take away their job by telling them how to do it.

So I think of this as even when, even when things are not going the way that I want them to right now, I trust that this is working. Even when there are problems to solve at my school, I have faith that we’re going in the right direction. I have faith that we are doing what’s best for kids to the best of our ability. Even though I’ve experienced a failure, I am committed to figuring this out. Even though I’ve experienced a loss, I have faith that I’m going to be okay and that I can handle this and that I’m on the right path, even when something isn’t perfect.

And it’s interesting because we so desire for our school to be perfect. We want everyone in attendance. We want everyone loving their job and fully, you know, 100% committed, 100% of the time. We want every parent happy. We want every teacher happy. We want every support staff happy. We want every meeting to go smoothly. We want the scores to always be going up. We want everybody to be making progress in the way that we measure it. Otherwise, it doesn’t feel like it’s considered growth.

If we’re not measuring it, then it doesn’t matter, right? So even though a kid has made tremendous progress, if we’re not progress monitoring that and putting it down onto paper and measuring it, it doesn’t feel as significant. Can I hold space that even when the scores on the paper aren’t moving, that my school is moving, that we are serving the students with what they need, not with what other people think they need, or how other people want us to measure their growth.

Whenever everything feels like it’s falling apart, you can either believe that it’s falling apart. Now let’s play this out. Everything’s falling apart. And that is your belief system. You wake up and your nervous system says, “Oh hello Miss Angela, everything is falling apart.” I want you to feel that in your body. Say it out loud with me. Oh my gosh, everything is falling apart. 

Where do you feel that in your body? For me, as I say this in this microphone to you, my heart starts to pound. I feel panicked. Everything is falling apart. That sentence, to say it out loud, I feel panicked, and in the reaction to that panic, I have an urge to do something very masculine, lots of energy, lots of doing, fixing, changing, stopping, stopping the bleeding, stopping the leak, make it stop. Make it stop not working. Make it stop falling apart.

And when you believe everything’s falling apart, you will react in fight or flight, and you will do everything you can to stop it from happening. Why? Because when things are falling apart, even when things fall apart, because they do, you lean into trust, into faith, and to commitment, to the belief. A commitment to the belief, not a commitment to action right now, a commitment to the belief that you’re going to be okay, that you can handle this, that you are equipped with the tools, the emotional regulation tools, and that you can handle the emotions that are coming up when things are in fact falling apart. 

But when you continue to tell yourself things are falling apart, things are falling apart, things are falling apart, that storyline is going to make you feel disempowered because the reaction, what the mind wants you to do is go take action. Very masculine energy to run in and to save the day, to stop the leaks, to solve the problems, to fix whatever it is. 

Versus when something happens, instead of going to, everything’s falling apart, all or none thinking, it’s all working or it’s all not. You can say, “Here’s what just happened. I have an angry parent. Why are they angry? They are angry because their student got in trouble. Why did the student get in trouble? Well, the student got in trouble because we observed this behavior. That behavior is against rules.”

And then the teacher forgot to tell the parent, and now the parent’s upset at the teacher for not communicating and upset that the child’s in trouble, and they don’t believe, okay, that’s what’s happening. So even when a parent is upset at me and is angry at the situation, I have the space and the capacity to handle it. Land of And, abundance. I don’t like the thought a parent’s angry at me because it doesn’t feel good and I want to go in and fix it so I don’t feel bad, but can I hold the space? Like this parent is angry, but they can be angry. I will work with them and it’s okay if they’re angry. They can be angry at something I have found evidence for the truth of. 

So if it’s true, you have evidence that their child did in fact conduct this certain behavior that’s against standard. They can be angry and you’re okay. And you can be upset with your teacher because they failed to communicate and that’s okay. And you can have a conversation with your teacher, and they might be uncomfortable about what happened or their lack of action, and that’s okay. It’s okay for other people to have feelings and you still be holding space for all of it, for how you feel, for how they feel, and everyone’s going to also be okay. Land of And. 

And you’re also 100% committed to communicating with the parents, with the teacher, with the student for as long as it takes for everyone to at least come to peace with what is. They might not like what is, but they’re at peace with it. They’ve accepted it. The student accepts their consequence. The parents accept that you’re not going backwards on the consequence. The teacher accepts responsibility and apologizes to the parent.

So the key in all of this is how it feels. So here’s where the Land of And works in school leadership. It’s when it feels abundant. When you can have this and that and feel good, you can trust, you can believe you’re on the right path. I can be a school leader and leave my work on my desk, no later than 5 p.m. each night and be okay. The Land of And. Now in the beginning, when you’re brand new, that might not feel true. You might be taking your work home. You might be checking email from 8 to 9 or whenever you fall asleep. 

You will expand your capacity to believe that the emails will always be there, everything will be okay, and you will start to schedule email checks in your work day, and you’ll be able to expand your capacity to be a school leader and not be working 24/7 and have boundaries around your time. You’ll expand into that belief. 

And it feels abundant to think, my goal is to, this is a feel-good goal. My goal is to be a school leader. I don’t want to be a teacher anymore. I want to be a school leader, and I want to figure out how to manage my time and to honor my boundaries and to have a life outside of checking emails all night long. I want to be with my kids, my family, my friends, my partner, myself, and that feels good. And I’m expanding into that identity of the person who can do both.

So let’s go back to the weight loss issue. Let’s say you want to lose 10 pounds, right? You can decide you’re going to lose 10 pounds and have a scoop of ice cream once a week and put that in your plan if it feels good. If it feels good to give yourself that indulgence and still lose 10 pounds, and it feels good, Land of And. Or you can do all or none. 

You can have a goal of losing 10 pounds and decide that you’re going to cut out ice cream as part of your plan because you’re either willing to miss it. You love ice cream, but you’re like, I am eating three ice cream cones, whatever, every single night. I just can’t help myself, and I’m committed. I’m willing to feel the deprivation of my love for ice cream in order to lose these 10 pounds. I’ve got a wedding coming up or whatever, right? We do all kinds of stuff. 

But let’s just say, I’m committed to the 10 pounds and I’m willing to feel the deprivation of the ice cream. Or maybe you’re like, wait a minute, of all the things that I could cut out in my food experience, my dining experience, I’m willing to give up ice cream. I’m willing to let it go. I’m willing because I realized of all the things, that’s what I would rather cut out. I’d rather be able to get a slice of pizza than a scoop of ice cream. If I had to pick, ice cream’s way easier. That feels good. So you can go all or none if it feels good and the Land of And when it feels good.

Now, thinking back to school leadership, thinking about this, I have a problem or I don’t have a problem. Which one feels more abundant? This is a problem and I have the capacity to solve it. Land of And. Or, this is not a problem. I am not going to make this a problem. All or none. If it’s working and it feels abundant, great. If it’s not working and you want it to work, problem solved, Land of And. Either way, if you believe it’s working but inside it doesn’t feel true, or you’re like, “Everything’s a problem,” and that doesn’t feel good, you’ll know that you’re using the wrong approach here. And not really wrong, it’s just the approach that doesn’t feel good. It’s not a feel-good goal.

So you’re either like, “Yes, things are working. I’m going to look for evidence that things are working. I’m going to build upon the things that are working to address the things that aren’t working as well as we’d like them to.” They might be working at 10% capacity or 40% capacity, but they are working. Or we’re like, okay, these things are working. Let them roll. This is where I want to work. This doesn’t feel good. I want to commit to this. I’m all in at solving this problem this year. 

So you either have a problem and you’re working to solve it, or it’s not a problem. You’re going to let it go. You’re going to focus on trust and faith that it’s working and will continue to work until it doesn’t. And then you’ll be committed to adjusting it.

So leaders, listen, I’m a person that has struggled with this for a long time. I have believed for many years of my life that things were happening to me, that I was a victim, a victim in my childhood, which I actually was because there was a huge imbalance of power and authority. And as I became an adult, I carried that with me and I used adult experiences and applied that thinking that things were happening to me, I didn’t belong, I didn’t fit in, I wasn’t good enough versus looking for an alternate truth. What else is true?

It could be that hard things happened and they’re happening for me. Land of And. It could be hard things are happening right now, but I’m committed 100% to figuring it out. I’m 100% in belief that I can handle this and I was made for this, and I’m 100% certain this is happening for me to either give me information or teach me a skill or provide me information and wisdom and knowledge and experience so that I can apply it moving forward. Expansion. It’s going to expand me, it’s going to greater empower me, and I’m going to hold the faith that even in the most uncomfortable moments or days or weeks or months or years. 

There are chapters, there are seasons of our life that are uncomfortable for an exceptional amount of time. You have the capacity. Even when you don’t feel like you’re handling it well, you’re handling it. If you’re waking up each day and you’re putting your feet on the ground and brushing your teeth and getting a shower and getting dressed and getting in the car and serving in whatever position you are currently serving, you are handling it. Even if you cry, let yourself cry. That’s healthy. Even if you go to bed at 7 p.m. and cry your eyes out until you fall asleep, you’re still handling it. Even when you feel the melancholy and the sadness and the grief and the loss, you’re handling it.

And sometimes those chapters take a minute before the joy comes back in. But boy, when you experience a negative 10 on the emotional scale where it feels like you’re not going to make it, and yet you do, when the plus 10 comes in, there is an appreciation for that joy, for that pleasure, for that satisfaction, for that happiness like never before. So have faith, even in the most uncomfortable moments, that it is for us as leaders. It is for them, those we are serving, and it is for the greater good.

If you find that this work, this conversation, deeply resonates with you, if you feel connected to this work, if it feels like something you would like to dive into, you would like to explore, you would like to study, the Empowered Principal Collaborative or one-on-one coaching, depending on your preference, one of those two programs is the most aligned program for you.

So I offer several programs, but this work that I’m talking about right here, the deep internal work can be done one-on-one and the balance is in the Empowered Principal Collaborative. So the collaborative is the balance of that direct professional development. It’s focusing on your leadership skills, but it also focuses on self-led mindset. So it’s skillset, all the mastery of the leadership skills, the actions you take, kind of the masculine part of your leadership position, but it also includes the self-led, the internal work, the feminine side, the emotional regulation work, the energetics. So those two programs are most aligned if you want to develop this within yourself.

So if you are interested in one-on-one coaching, there is a link in the show notes to schedule a one-on-one consult with me. We will have a conversation and I will work with you and I’ll let you know very honestly if one-on-one is appropriate or if another program is more appropriate. We’ll find out what suits you best. If you feel called to the Empowered Principal Collaborative, there will be a link in the show notes to sign up for the group coaching program. 

And that’s where you’ll get a lot of the leadership mastery skills. That’s a lot of the application in your leadership position. That’s the work we do on the daily. And that program runs from September to the end of May. It’s basically Labor Day to Memorial Day, but we have bonuses in the month of August for planning and preparing because you’re doing a lot of that work, okay?

All right. I wish you the most aligned, beautiful day. Happy June, happy summer. Come on into Summer of Fun. We’re doing so much over here in the world of the Empowered Principal, and I would be delighted for you to join us. Have a beautiful day. We’ll talk soon. Take care. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Angela Kelly: Hey there, empowered principals. A quick heads up before we begin this podcast episode: This particular episode mentions some sensitive topics, including childhood trauma and a suicide attempt. I invite you to please listen with care.

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 441.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host, certified life coach Angela Kelly.

Hello empowered principals. Happy Tuesday and welcome to the podcast. We want to congratulate you for all of you who have finished out the school year. What a wonderful year it is, and summer break is coming along. And I hope that you are able to complete all your staffing and finalize those last little minute tasks that you need to get done so you can go off and enjoy a beautiful, beautiful summer break.

I have a special guest here with me today. His name is Thayne Martin. He is the founder and owner of It’s Pure Love. We met online and we had a meet and greet, and we just hit it off. He has some amazing stories, amazing content, and amazing resources for educators. So, Thayne, welcome to the podcast.

Thayne Martin: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure. I admire your work and the goodness that you put into the world. So thank you for being you.

Angela Kelly: I really appreciate that. For us having just met, I felt like I found a kindred spirit out there. Like we are trying to bring the humanity back into education: love, compassion, kindness, patience, understanding. And Thayne’s energy and the work that he’s doing, really, I felt very compelled to bring this to your attention as the listeners, especially this time of year because as that year is ending, we’re softening a little bit. Like we’re taking a deeper breath, we are relaxing a little bit, and Thayne’s going to tell you, he has a wife who is in education. He’s going to tell you some stories.

But this is the time of year where we’re reflecting, we’re taking a break, and this is the perfect opportunity to just really embrace what Thayne has to offer and to start practicing it when you have the time and space over the summer months and you have a little more flexibility in your day to embody this and bring this into your practice as you’re planning and preparing for next fall, which is unfortunately right around the corner, right? It happens sooner than we realize. So, Thayne, tell us a little bit about your background, your history, the work your wife is doing in the world, and then how you developed It’s Pure Love.

Thayne Martin: Yes, okay. So before I get into that, I just want to thank every teacher that’s listening. I’ve been fortunate, married to my best friend, and I’ve supported her through her teaching career. And Friday is her last day, 23 years of teaching with this particular district. I think it’s around 28, 29 total years teaching. So thank you to all you teachers for making a difference in the world and for putting the love into the children that someday will be the children that take care of each one of us. 

So I want to just first off thank each of you because I know it’s a sacrifice. I know how difficult it is to be a teacher in today’s classroom and even more so today because we live in a world where the support for education is under attack.

It’s under attack because our society is under attack and the things that matter to us, the things that matter to families, to teachers, like kindness, love, gratitude, all those prosocial emotions, that’s where I found happiness for me. And in learning how to be happy myself, I learned a particular way to find that happiness and then communicate it in a way that everybody can learn from.

So I’ll back up a little bit and tell you a little bit about my story. So I grew up here in Phoenix, Arizona, born into a beautiful family, great mother, great father, and life was normal for me as a little kid. Lower middle income, we didn’t have a lot, but we had what we needed. But my life changed for me as a child because sadly, there was a man that moved into our neighborhood that was a ugly individual that decided that his needs were more important than mine. 

And so sadly enough, he ended up robbing me of what I would say is a normal childhood development because I found myself at the hands of ugliness. So I did like most people try to do, especially men. I tried to outrun that trauma and that led to a lot of poor choices and ultimately late in life for me, being blunt, it was a suicide attempt.

And that suicide attempt was that wake-up call for everybody in my life that something had happened to this man. And not once in my life, I was in my late 30s for the first time I told one single person what ever happened to me. So my life has been about learning how to stand back up because I lived my life as a victim. I ended up going into your traditional therapy and I’m grateful for that. But in the end, it was experiential neuroscience that actually healed me because I realized that all the therapy in the world wasn’t making it stick.

Why was I spending literally decades in therapy, working with therapists and psychologists, talking about my past, talking about things that I needed to do, talking about being better when my emotional dysregulation would enter the picture. But no matter what I did, every time you get into that situation where the body responds, if you don’t have practice from that body response, ultimately, you’re not going to make the right decision. And that’s what I realized. 

So for me, it was my life experience that led me to this work of neuroscience. And interesting enough, not that enough crazy things haven’t happened to me, but it was an accidental drowning. I literally was in an accidental drowning and I lost consciousness and I died. And when I came back, I came back with knowledge and I came back with an understanding of what really matters in this life.

And so I started pouring myself into neuroscience because I realized that if I wanted to heal my brain, I also needed to heal my body because my body was operating different from what my brain was operating. And that’s when I started discovering experiential neuroscience. So that’s a little bit about my background and how I came into it. 

I started my company, It’s Pure Love, a little over a year and a half ago, and we are pioneering experiential neuroscience and actually going to be having some of our protocols studied at a university level because we’ve uncovered some pretty uncanny ways that we can help the brain learn in the classroom. So super excited about that. And anyway.

Angela Kelly: Yes.

Thayne Martin: That’s my story.

Angela Kelly: Yes. And I didn’t even know any of this story. So we always do a meet and greet, as you guys know. And Thayne and I were talking about love and, you know, just the humanity bringing it back to education. And he’s like, “Yeah, I used to have an anger management problem.” And I was like, “What? You?” I cannot even fathom that in this, you know, the version of you that I’ve met.

Thayne Martin: Because I was angry. I had never gotten help. I had never, you know, especially for men that are abused as kids, there’s not a lot of resources for us. And there’s also not a lot of people that specialize in men that were abused as children. And that’s also one of the reasons why I stand up because I’m not ashamed of what happened to me. I was ashamed most of my life and I showed up as a victim. And that’s also why I was angry. I was full of piss and vinegar. I was kind to my family and friends, but outside of that, I was full of toxic. I wasn’t kind. I would say I was a Karen.

I was a Karen, and I showed up that way. I was privileged. I was making a lot of money and I showed up that way. And I also did not like who I had become. I didn’t like being angry, but I didn’t know how to process that anger. 

I did not know how to not respond when my body escalated. I mean, it could have been road rage for me. I could have been driving down the road and the body serves up the response because somebody cut you off. Well, that response from the body is automatic and it is fast. And so immediately, somebody would cut me off and where do I go? I would go into road rage. Well, that’s not healthy either.

So I was looking at my life and I was looking at everything going on in my life, and frankly, it was a train wreck. It was a train wreck. On the outside, everything in my life was perfect. On the inside, I was completely broken and I was hiding because I’d never shared what happened to me. So for me, it was that wake-up call that made me realize that my body’s response is separate from my mind’s response. 

And until I can learn to train this body to understand what this mind is thinking and make them work together, I’m going to continue showing up in the world in a negative way. So how do I train that negative response that immediately comes out of my body when I experience anger? That’s literally what led me down the path of neuroscience. 

And then honestly, I’m a very religious person. I didn’t used to be. Before I drowned in the pool, I was an atheist, but I’m not an atheist anymore. I understand things. I understand what’s important, okay?

Angela Kelly: Yes. Can you tell us a little bit like what was the awakening? What was the clarity, the aha moment for you? Like what were the thoughts and the shifts?

Thayne Martin: Yeah, okay, great question. So when I drowned, I was very fortunate to get out of the pool alive. I know that. When I came out of the pool, my body wasn’t working. When you lose oxygen and the body goes down, when your soul comes back into your body, it doesn’t immediately engage. It’s like I wanted to swim. I wanted to swim, but I couldn’t. So I literally managed to meander my way by just moving my limbs. I was wiggling to find safety. And I found a step in my pool that I could rest on.

And the aha moment for me was laying on the side of that pool, realizing that I had escaped death and looking up into that massive beautiful sky and seeing the moon and all these stars. And what came to me was that everything up there was perfectly balanced and everything down here was not. And that included myself. So how do I, how is this maintained balance?

So ultimately, it led to this discovery. And the discovery is essentially a scientific principle. And if you understand that everything in the universe stays perfectly balanced, then you also understand that the language of the universe is actually math. So all those math teachers out there, I want to thank you because that is the language of the universe. 

And it is that understanding of math that when you apply the principles of math to physical matter, it always applies, okay? So when I started thinking about that, I started realizing that the anger that I had inside was a human emotion. And human emotion is physical energy when it leaves my body. So therefore, the principles of math that describe the universe can also support me in my life and in my emotion.

So that’s what led to this idea. And it starts with basic math. And every person that I teach, I teach and I take them back to first grade. I take them back when they learned their initial math skills: first grade, second grade. And I always ask them because the beautiful thing about the equation of life and abundant happiness is you already know the operators. Every human being knows them, and I thank every teacher for teaching them. Now I’m going to teach you a different way to apply them. All right? So it goes like this.

The first thing you learned in elementary school was addition. You learned 1+1. Well, in the equation of life and abundant happiness, addition means adding those things in life that bring forth goodness and joy. That’s addition. The next thing we learned was 1-1. That was subtraction. And subtraction in the equation of life and abundant happiness is about letting go of those things that don’t serve us, that don’t help us. 

And the one thing that I learned when I died in that pool is the importance of the present moment. That was a space that I never lived in. I was always like consumed with my past that I couldn’t fix and a future that scared the heck out of me. But what I never did was stay present in the moment.

So I learned with the equation of life and abundant happiness, the power of emotional regulation is staying aware and being in the moment. So the thing upstairs that everybody gets to define, okay? The expectation is that we as humans, we balance. So I add what I need, subtract what I don’t, and I achieve what I call neutral balance, where I’m not encumbered one way or the other. I’m perfectly balanced in this moment right where I’m at. So we have addition, subtraction. 

Then the next thing that they learned in elementary school was multiplication. And multiplication is about growth. It’s about aligning your friends, your family, your teachers, your co-workers, your fellow students, the thing upstairs, and letting the world help you grow. It’s about expansion. So you embody action and intention and you move out into the world and you create, and it grows and it gets bigger.

So now I’ve learned multiplication and I can see how I could actually apply that in my life. What did we learn next? We learned division. After we memorized those multiplication tables, we learned division. And division is about taking the expanded growth, that amazing goodness that we created, and then dividing it and putting it back into the world from where it came. So we’re supposed to work on what we call the principle of abundance. 

And that means the principle of abundance is a cost from your heart. So in the example, if I had a hundred dollars, I balance, I put action and intention, I engage my family, friends, teachers, co-workers, and I grow this to a thousand dollars. How much of that thousand do I actually need, number one, and then secondly, we understand that human beings have a desire for safety. So how much more do I need in order to feel safe? So maybe I need 600 out of that thousand and then another 200 to feel safe.

That’s my heartfelt abundance. That is the cost of that growth. So what that means is there’s two hundred dollars of extra abundance that I don’t need. Well, we’re supposed to put it back into the system. Unfortunately, mankind hasn’t figured that out and we’re holding on to money and that’s resulted in greed and excessive wealth. It bothers me that we’re going to have our world’s first trillionaire, and then we have people in third world countries that go to bed hungry every night. And yet they all sleep under the same sun. 

And that’s why me and my work is about changing that and bringing happiness and goodness back into, to life. So we add, subtract, we multiply, divide, and then we find the equal sign. The equal sign in the equation of life and abundant happiness means gratitude. It is gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.

And I would tell you that I did not know gratitude. I did not embody gratitude. And if you said gratitude to me before I drowned, I would have rolled my eyes at you because that is the same thing my grandmother used to use with me, right? When I wanted that extra thing of ice cream, my grandma would be the first one to go, “You need to be more grateful for the two scoops of ice cream that you already have before asking for the third.” And then I’d roll my eyes. So that was my relationship with gratitude.

And then I drowned, okay? And so I realized that gratitude was something that wasn’t the center in my life, not like it should. And so I decided one morning, I took a picture of a sunrise, and it was the most beautiful sunrise. And I posted on social media and I asked people, “What are you grateful for?” And you know what the most common thing that people talked about? Gratitude. Gratitude. They were thankful for gratitude and living with gratitude. And I’m like, “I don’t live gratitude. I don’t even really understand it. And it’s a word that ticks me off.”

So I decided to learn gratitude. I made a decision to get up that next morning and celebrate every sunrise for 365 days. And then somewhere along the way, I started podcasting on Instagram, sharing my journey with my family and friends. And this is where the equation of life and abundant happiness came from. And I tried learning gratitude by writing lists. That didn’t work. I tried an app to learn gratitude. That didn’t work. 

And then one day, I met a stranger. I met a stranger that completely blew me away. They did something for me in public that they didn’t have to do, and I was struggling. It was an emergency situation. And this person stepped forward and in a moment that could have gone horribly wrong, she lent an ear and kindness from her heart, and she turned what could have been a very ugly situation into a beautiful situation.

And then I did something I’ve never done before. I thanked them authentically and genuinely from my heart. And when I did that, in this one particular instance, I got something that I now call a gratitude cocktail. And it starts at the top of the head and it goes all the way down to the feet. It comes all the way back up through the body, and then you feel your vagus nerve begin to wave and oscillate. And I got tears. I started crying because it was joy that I was experiencing with this other human who is a perfect stranger. And the interesting thing, she had happy tears too.

So I left that moment and I said to myself, this is gratitude. How do I learn this? I want this feeling of an abundant happiness and joy that literally overwhelmed me. So I stepped into the world of neuroscience because I wanted to find out why did that happen that first time? So I went on along my day and I tried to create that experience with other people. And then ultimately, I couldn’t do it. And then I started studying. Why did I have this physiological experience with a stranger, but I didn’t have the same experience when I practiced gratitude with people I know?

And that led me to one of literally the most vast discoveries in neuroscience, which we’re actually now studying. And I have an amazing, she’s my vice president of neuroscience and research. She’s got 23 years clinical experience studying this. And I taught her the equation of life and abundant happiness. It changed her life, and then she said, “I want to join you. I want to study this. This is amazing what you’ve learned.”

So from that one exercise, I learned that the human being learns by experiencing, not by reading, not by doing. That’s why all those years of me sitting in seminars, right? That’s something my wife talks about all the time at the district. They bring in these people to come in and talk about teaching emotional regulation, social skills, and it’s a seminar. 

And the teachers sit through the seminar, they pay attention, and then at the end of the seminar, they roll their eyes and they say, there’s no way this is ever going to stick in the classroom because they’ve never really, at least in her district, got the kind of training in order to teach children to be emotionally intelligent in the classroom. And so that’s when I realized that I needed to create something specifically, not only for business and people, but also in education because I learned that we retain 90% when we do something. And we only retain 10% when we read about it or do traditional learning.

So experiential neuroscience is using experiences that are designed to open the heart, open the mind, and create goodness, love, connection, empathy, happiness. It’s all about training the body from a physical response to a new prosocial emotion, and they’re done through experiences. So the experiences are done with family, friends, and even with strangers. 

And you’re going to learn from your family and friends and strangers, each of these exercises, you’re going to see how you show up in life. You’re going to learn some amazing things about yourself. And you may learn some things about yourself that you want to change because you realize that that’s an old belief that came from my childhood. And I just realized in doing this experience in this deck of cards that that’s been with me since third grade. I’ll share that. Yeah.

I recently was working with a client that really struggled to be seen in public. She didn’t like to engage with people. She was afraid to talk to people. She was afraid to speak up and have a voice. And ultimately, I have an experience that I had her do where she had to be a little bit vulnerable with people in public. And ultimately, she struggled through the exercise and then she completed it. And then she recorded a video of her completing the exercise. 

And what changed in her was the abundant happiness because she realized that she could talk to people in public, have an amazing experience with them, and get out of that thought process where she was humiliated when she was a little girl at the lunch table in third grade. That one memory from third grade is what this woman has carried her whole life. And now because she experienced it in real time that she could actually work with a stranger and have love, kindness, and connection, she’s no longer afraid of that anymore. So she overcame that barrier through experiential learning. 

And that’s what experiential neuroscience is. It’s about exercises that are rooted in safety that make the person a little bit uncomfortable so that we can learn. And then while we’re in that exercise and the brain is paying attention, all of the exercises are designed to deliver a prosocial emotion experience at the end. So what it does is it’s updating the physiological response from the body real time to a new memory. And we’re literally rewriting that old story that the body continually plays. And when you rewrite that story from the body and tie it to a new memory in the mind, it remembers. That’s that 90%. So that’s in a nutshell what I do and working with people.

Angela Kelly: Yes. I can see where principals would be following along and even though like neuro, neuroscience sounds like very complicated and very complex, you have a way of breaking it down. So what leaders want to know, I think they can believe. They can feel this, they can believe it, they can see the truth in it. And then they, their brain goes, but how? 

So you and I were sharing, you were sharing some really like concrete simple examples of things that people could listen to this very podcast and turn it off and walk away and experiment with this and try it out and start to feel some changes. Do you want to share some of those?

Thayne Martin: Absolutely. Yeah. So when we work with schools, we work with principals, we work with teachers, and we work with students. So we’re going to be teaching emotional intelligence and social intelligence and metacognition, okay? We teach that as well to every layer in education because it has to be full boat. You can’t have leadership that’s emotionally intelligent, teachers that are not emotionally intelligent. Everybody’s got to be trained in the same system. All right. So let’s take a principal.

So this is a card and I’ve shared it with your team and you can edit it in. And anybody that wants copies of these cards, that information will be available on my website as well as you. So this one is called Let’s Do Lunch. And this is a card specifically from the deck of cards that’s designed to teach principals emotional intelligence and social intelligence skills, okay? So this is what Let’s Do Lunch is. 

Pick an associate you don’t know very much about and make a personal attempt to know them better by inviting them unexpectedly to your office or room for lunch. Okay. Don’t talk anything about school. This conversation is about getting to know each other as principal and teacher. Talk about your life, their life, family life, favorite movies. Be human, okay? 

So what’s the first thing that comes up to you when I ask you to play that card? Because the first thing that pops into your mind is what we call first awareness. And first awareness is usually the most accurate response because it’s coming from the subconscious and it’s not filtered by prefrontal cortex and organized thought. So I always ask people what’s the first thing that I ask when I just asked you to randomly, as a principal, go find a teacher and have lunch with them unexpectedly last minute, okay? Like that should be your first awareness.

The second thing is, what fears stop me from connecting with my co-workers and others? As a principal, what keeps me from knowing my teachers better on a personal level? Because at the end of the day, we’re all human. And when we struggle to balance our emotional energy at home, when we have fights with our spouses and we bring it to work, does that affect the classroom? Of course it does. That’s why as a principal, you know what? You’re also a counselor to your teachers. We’re all in this together. 

So part of this is about building empathy and leadership and remembering the importance of putting love even at work, right? That’s the fun thing. Itspurelove.com. My company teaches love. We teach it to businesses, we teach it to schools, we teach it to people because love is the most powerful teacher of all. It really is.

So imagine in this example how that teacher is going to feel when you the principal, pull that person in and you pour your life and you pour your thanks and your gratitude. Hey, you know, Mrs. Smith, you’ve been working for me. I noticed you’ve been here for over 10 years and I can’t think of one time when you and I sat down and had lunch together. So I brought you in today because I want you to know how much I appreciate you and how much you matter, not only to me as the principal of the school, but to the students and the parents. I am constantly reminded of the amazing work that you do. 

And time after time, I hear other teachers always telling me about you picking up the extra slack. You know, there’s always that teacher that sometimes struggles to get out there and get duty done. And yet sometimes you substitute and you work to help that person. Not everybody does that, but you do. So Mrs. Smith, as your principal, I just brought you in here today to let you know how much I appreciate you, how much I care about you, and I just want to get to know you a little bit better. So let’s have lunch today. Tell me about your life. Where are you from? What’s going on in your home life? 

Just have a conversation as two humans and watch what happens because you’re going to build an amazing relationship with that teacher and she will not forget this lunch meeting. And then she’s going to go into that lunch room and she’s going to tell everybody there that she just had the most amazing meeting with the principal and that that principal thanked her and made her feel special. She was seen. And that’s something that every employee wants. They just want to be seen. 

And I would tell you that in my wife’s career, I can’t think of that many times where she actually felt seen. And that’s a reflection on leadership. So that’s an exercise that any principal can do. That’s just one example of 101 exercises I’ve designed for a principal to learn about themselves and how they’re showing up in leadership. So that’s an example of a principal. Does that make sense?

Angela Kelly: Yep. That totally makes sense. No, that’s great. Let’s talk about what it would look like in the classroom. So with teachers, students, how can we start to, we don’t need to understand maybe all of the depths of the neuroscience behind it, but we want to understand enough so that we see the value in it and we see the benefit of it because once we understand it and we feel it, then we’re inclined to want to engage with it and embody it. So what would that look like in a classroom with teachers and students?

Thayne Martin: Yes. So the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to come in and we’re going to train all the teachers. All the leaders are going to get trained in emotional intelligence. So you would actually go through our course and we would teach you emotional intelligence skills through experiential learning. So an example for a teacher learning to embody goodness and all the things that teachers, I’m going to say automatically do. Most teachers really do. But the cards are designed to, you know, also open up the teacher’s heart and see how they’re showing up. And it’s about creating community inside of the school, right? And it’s, it’s every layer. It’s leadership, it’s the staff, and it’s the students.

So at the staff level, we’re going to be teaching you about emotional regulation. We’re going to teach you how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, equals. You will learn the equation of life and abundant happiness, and you’ll use it in a way to teach children how to ultimately manage their own emotions because the biggest problem my wife has had is she’s never been trained in emotional intelligence in order to teach those children. 

And it used to be that parents were the people that taught emotional intelligence. But today, those parents are running two jobs, working three jobs to make ends meet, which means that the emotional intelligence skills and the social intelligence skills aren’t being taught at home. That has put extra demands on the teachers. That’s something that my wife has faced because she has found more and more being piled on to her as the educator that used to be done at home.

So my wife’s biggest complaint being a teacher of almost 30 years was that there was never any education to teach her to teach emotional intelligence to children. There wasn’t a program that was easily identified that the kids could learn prosocial emotion. Okay. 

So let’s use one as an example. So I created one. This is one that’s also available. And this exercise is called Magic Lunchbox. And with Magic Lunchbox, the teacher is going to have not only a deck that they’re going to teach emotional regulation using mathematical skills. So there will be some teaching curriculum available to teach in the classroom, but the real teacher is actually the experiences themselves.

So here’s a perfect example. This is called Magic Lunchbox. So the teacher allows students to draw numbers from a magic lunchbox. The students then have 10 minutes to find their match and spend their lunchtime today with a new lunch buddy. For added fun, the students are not allowed to speak to find their match. They must communicate through gestures and non-verbal clues. Odd number, teacher is the match. So you as the teacher might be a match for that one kid if you have an odd number of kids in your classroom. Okay. 

So now imagine those children and the excitement they have going in and pulling that number and their magic lunchbox and imagine the prosocial skills and the fun that they’re going to have trying to find their match in the classroom to be their lunch buddy that day. But the fun is that they’re not able to speak. They have to use different forms of communication. So that means the kids get to get creative. Maybe they get a piece of paper and they write a story and they walk around with their story until they find the person that has their number. You want to promote creativity and you want to make it fun.

So then once those kids have found their match, then that day they are to have lunch in the lunchroom with that new buddy. So that’s a great exercise that you could do say at the beginning of the year to start promoting prosocial emotion and emotional intelligence when the children and creating connection. So that’s just an example of one exercise that you could do with children in the classroom. The deck itself has 100 cards and every one of them is designed specifically to meet the needs of the students, right? 

There’s also a deck of 101 cards to design to teach the teachers emotional intelligence. So as your students are going through the course, so are you the teacher. What’s great about that is as you learn, you will embody the emotional intelligence and the social intelligence skills from completing the exercises, and then you’re going to be an even better teacher to teach those kids emotional intelligence and social intelligence as they work similar exercises, but they’re designed for kids, right?

So like an example for a teacher, this is one my wife loves. And by the way, my wife is actively engaged in creating them. When she retires, she’s going to be onboarding and taking ELAHcation, that’s the name of our program, and running it into the districts and helping us create more exercises because nobody knows the classroom like a teacher. I’m a neuroscientist, I’m a business guy. I don’t know the classroom like my wife does. So she’s actually helped me tremendously bring content that teachers care about and principals and students.

So when I was designing an exercise to share with your audience today, we created one called Duty Break, okay? And I know when I say duty my wife just kind of goes, she rolls her eyes, right? Like every teacher does, okay? So this card, Duty Break is a fun card that you as a teacher would experience in school, okay? 

So this is the mission for Duty Break. We all know duty isn’t always bliss. Today, take a look at the playground, letting your heart direct you, find a teacher currently assigned to duty, and relieve them of command. No questions asked. Let them know how much you appreciate them and how they show up at school. Smile and take over their duty responsibilities. 

Now, imagine the goodness that you just created with that co-worker by not only seeing them and recognizing them for their contributions to the school, but to give them that kindness and love randomly, unexpected. Trust me, that teacher will remember that, right? And so will you. And you’re going to have this amazing experience that I just experienced from that other teacher. 

And now that teacher is somebody that I didn’t know before because they’re in the fifth grade and I’m in first grade and we don’t always, we’re in different lunchrooms and different lunch hours, but now I have a relationship with this teacher because I relieved her of duty. And someday, maybe she relieves me of my duty when she sees I’m at the end of my rope. Okay. That’s the beauty of this. So everything is about creating prosocial emotions: love, kindness, gratitude, empathy, forgiveness, all the things that children need and adults need and leaders need to be effective in the world today. So that’s kind of in a nutshell what we do and how we teach in the classroom. Does that, hopefully, does that make sense?

Angela Kelly: Yeah, that’s wonderful. No, thank you so much for that. Yeah, it makes total sense. Thank you so much for sharing your beauty, your presence, your gratitude, and the work that you’re doing with this company. I see the value in it. I see the benefit, and I, what I really appreciate most is like your science and math brain coming together with the artistry and, you know, skill set of your wife’s number of years in the classroom and her skill set there. Like that combination is so beautiful. And I look forward to seeing your work throughout schools that I work with as well. So it’s a nice little compliment. Yes, absolutely.

Thayne Martin: Yes. Thank you so much.

Angela Kelly: Yeah. Well, thank you for your time today. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for, you know, reaching out and wanting to share this with the listeners of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. It’s, it’s a gift and we need as much as we can.

Thayne Martin: I am grateful for you teachers. I really am. You know, I have three daughters that are very powerful, loving, kind women today. And I know that they have many teachers along the way. I don’t want to get emotional, but there’s certain teachers that stepped up for my girls at certain parts of their life when I wasn’t always being the gentleman that I am today. There were teachers that stepped in and helped my kids. 

So thank you to all you teachers because I know it’s a sacrifice and I know oftentimes you’re not seen, but I want you to know that this man sees you. I see the issues that we’re dealing with and we’re going to fix all of that. We’re going to fix the world, we’re going to fix the classroom, and we’re going to do it with love.

Angela Kelly: Yes. Thank you so much once again. That is it, empowered principals. May you use this as an opportunity to explore gratitude, authentic gratitude, authentic appreciation for all of the gifts and blessings in your life, in your professional life, your personal life. And may this bring you so much joy. 

And for more information, all of the information we talked about today and resources will be in the show notes. So you can access all of that there. Thayne has provided some free resources for you to check out and there’ll be links for more information for you to explore and access that. So again, thank you all. Have a beautiful week. Take good care and we will talk to you next week. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.